381st Maryland Day

381st Maryland Day

Fellow PGCHS Trustees,

Yesterday, our Cousin, Joanne Calvert, recorded the attached photographs of Justin McClain, of Upper Marlboro, MD, along with his Theology students from Bishop McNamara High School, Forestville, Maryland–Alexa Castro and Keith Sykes. As representatives of the youngest generations and, thus, our State’s future, they were the final members in the procession at The Baltimore Cathedral on Wednesday, March 25th, commemorating the 381st anniversary of “Maryland Day”. Justin McClain, our newest Prince George’s County Historical Society (PGCHS) Trustee, as well as a new member of The Maryland Historical Society, serves on Bishop McNamara’s faculty. The three represented the PGCHS in the procession at The Cathedral celebrating the landing of The Ark and The Dove and the first Marylanders in Maryland on March 25, 1634. They placed the Prince George’s County flag (generously lent by “Riversdale Museum”) along with a boxwood wreath representing the PGCHS at the altar of the first Cathedral–the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

This annual event in downtown Baltimore, organized by the Sons of Colonial Wars, and co- sponsored by The Society of The Ark and The Dove, The Maryland Historical Society, Historic St. Mary’s City and over a dozen hereditary groups (The National Society of The Colonial Dames and historical societies,also included Marylanders, a Native Americans, African Americans, the legal profession, and the clergy, along with historically- attired re-enacters dressed as those earliest immigrants. They represented different eras in Maryland history, and were accompanied by the Cathedral organist and soloist, musicians and the U.S. Army’s 3rd infantry “Old Guard” fife and drum unit. The service began with words of Native American, Daniel Fire Hawk…and nearly an hour later, ended with the presentation of the Prince George’s County Historical Society’s wreath by our fine young representatives. (All the wreaths were later to be placed at the city’s Cecilius Calvert Monument in downtown Baltimore across from The Courthouse.) The service was solemn, impressive, colorful, evocative and educational within that magisterial architectural gem of Benjamin Henry Latrobe.

Following the morning’s service, we all departed for The Maryland Historical Society for a light buffet lunch and to attend the opening of the museum’s “Three Coffins Exhibition”– the three lead coffins unearthed in 1990 at St. Mary’s City which we now know, after years of careful study and analyses, held the bodies of Philip Calvert,(son of the First Lord Baltimore who was the 5th Governor of Maryland), along with his wife Anne Wolsely and an unknown child. Following the exhibition, the lead coffins will be re-interred in the new recreation of the original Catholic Chapel in Old St. Mary’s City. The respectful and careful study of the remains have allowed historians and scientists to far better understand the rigors of the difficult lives endured by our earliest Maryland forebears.